Policy Research @ HKIAPS

Past Events: Workshops

Ms Annie K. L. Tam (left), Prof. Fanny M. Cheung (middle), and Mr Woon-kwong Lam (right) The first policy research workshop with faculty members
Writing Policy Papers 5 January 2018 \| 09:30–12:00 \| Room 520, Sino Building, CUHK
Speakers Mr Woon-kwong Lam	Honorary Senior Research Fellow, HKIAPS; Former Convenor, Executive Council, HKSAR Government
Ms Annie K. L. Tam	Honorary Senior Research Fellow, HKIAPS; Former Permanent Secretary for Labour and Welfare, HKSAR Government
Moderator Prof. Fanny M. Cheung	Pro-Vice-Chancellor, CUHK; Co-Director, HKIAPS

Policy Research @ HKIAPS presented its inaugural workshop on the topic “Writing Policy Papers”. In this workshop, two former senior members of the HKSAR Government, Mr Woon-kwong Lam and Ms Annie K. L. Tam shared with the audience their insights on the potential barriers to translating academic work into government policy reports/briefs and suggested helpful techniques for effective policy paper writing.

Both speakers answered questions on policy writing raised by the audience. A research report recently produced by HKIAPS members was used as a case study for further discussion. More than thirty invited professors and researchers, including several CUHK Research Committee members, attended the workshop.

Mr Woon-kwong Lam: “Why Policymakers Don’t Read Our Academic Research”

Mr Lam started with humorous cartoons illustrating the different mindsets between academics and government policymakers. He pointed out that in a rational model, a policymaker would identify the problem, define the policy goal, list all potential policy alternatives, assess the consequences of each alternative, compare them with the goal, and then choose the best alternative. However, in the real world, such a model is hardly operable due to numerous constraints. A decision-making process is inevitably restricted in the real world by limited resources, incomplete/imperfect information, and the limited decision-making capabilities of policymakers.

Even more importantly, since human beings are far from being rational calculating machines, facts do not usually change people’s mind; rather, emotions do. As a result, he emphasized, academic researchers need to bear in mind that policymaking is an inherently political process, which can neither be objective nor value-neutral. This is not to suggest that academic researchers should tailor their research to any political agenda, which would make the research findings useless. But in order for policymakers to regard the research outputs as useful, scholars need to take this fact into consideration.

As an inherently political process, policymakers generally encounter a number of political hazards. These include a corrupt political ecosystem, prevailing special interests, grandstanding, a going for the quick-fix mindset, spinning crowds out engagements, the blaming game, and others. These hazards, combined with other constraints, often turn the issues under policy consideration into “wicked problems”. Political reform, land and housing supply, healthcare reform, retirement protection, income inequality, and social immobility for youths are some prominent examples of “wicked problems” in Hong Kong.

Despite the difficulties, Mr Lam strongly encouraged scholars to consider tackling those problems through their academic research. Quoting Albert Einstein, he noted that policymakers need take a different approach to thinking to solve those problems and that it is worth the effort to make marks on the big picture.

Ms Annie K. L. Tam: “The Policy Reports that Policymakers Read”

Ms Tam addressed the core question that many scholars have pondered: How can good research produce an effective policy report for government policymakers?

“A report is effective if it gets read, understood, and used by the target audience.” So a government policymaker may read a report that he/she thinks is likely to be relevant and useful to him/her, which means that an effective policy report should have a public policy content value – to enable policymakers to make decisions on what to do or what not to do. To test whether a report has policy content value, the author could try to answer some main questions:

What policy issues were covered? Have any specific recommendations been suggested for policymakers? Has the report provided any public policy solutions?

In order to translate research findings into public policy solutions, it is very helpful for researchers to prepare an effective Executive Summary or Transmittal Letter, presenting the key findings, conclusions, and recommendations of their research. This summary should focus on the answers to the governing questions in Hong Kong and be able to arouse the interest of policymakers. Also, since a policymaker cannot afford to spend several hours on a single report, the researchers need to ensure that their reports have high skim value. This requires the messages in the report to be conclusion-oriented, presented in a clear and logical manner, and easily digestible for non-specialists. Based on her extensive experience in reviewing as well as drafting numerous reports, Ms Tam shared various techniques that can be used to enhance the skim value of a report.

Ms Tam also noted the hurdles that academic researchers might face when writing a policy report. In some circumstances, a should-be-effective report may turn out to be not effective, as policymaking is by nature a complex and continuously changing process. However, she urged scholars to take up the challenge, and called for both researchers and policymakers to make the effort to come up with better policy solutions for the benefit of our society and future generations.